There’s a stereotype surrounding the concept of splitting that I wanted to talk about.
Splitting is a word used a lot in reference to a behavior presented by those with cluster b personality disorders. Splitting occurs when the disordered person has a drastic shift in the way they view and feel about themselves and/or others. It often presents in us categorizing the self and individuals as “all good” or “all bad” regardless of there being any sort of nuance. When a person splits, any memories of feeling otherwise are altered to fit the current emotions and beliefs. This means that once we begin seeing something as “all bad” in our minds, it has always been “all bad” and our memories and beliefs change to reflect that.
Stereotypical splitting is highly emotional and often explosive, dramatic, and related to jealousy or abandonment issues. It may involve the person going from being obsessed with you, loving you and giving you everything you could ever want, to furiously despising you, flying into a boiling rage and tearing down everything they gave you out of hatred— simply because they saw you talking to someone else.
While splitting does have the potential to look this way in some people, it doesn’t always work like that. There are many different ways splitting can be experienced, and even more ways it can present itself.
Splitting is not always emotional. Splitting can also be an experience of thought rather than feeling. I may feel generally indifferent to you, and that won’t change. What changes is the way I think about you as a person. I may go from seeing you as an ally to an enemy without any sort of emotional component involved. This is common for people with low empathy, a lower capacity for emotional connection, or who experience emotional numbness. We may not have dramatically changing emotions when we split, because we never had that sort of attachment in the first place.
Splitting isn’t always related to jealousy or abandonment issues. Sometimes it could happen simply because you said no, or because we feel you’re not listening, or because our needs aren’t being met in a way that makes the relationship seem safe to us. Splitting could even happen because you are showing us love. It’s a lot more complex than just being “clingy” or jealous. Sometimes we split because everything is going perfect—because we’re constantly waiting for some sort of catch or turn of events to come up and destroy the peace again.
Splitting isn’t a manipulation tactic. We do not do it to harm or punish you, or to get our way through tantrums. Splitting is a trauma response that we cannot control. Our brains decided we needed to change how we see people when our needs aren’t being met and we no longer feel safe. We don’t get to choose when that is or who we do it for. It’s an automatic response to feeling like things are no longer okay, and it’s just as distressing for us as it can be for the people we direct it towards. We don’t want to feel like we need to constantly destroy relationships to preserve ourselves. It’s tiring and lonely and impairs our ability to have a normal connection to others. Nobody wants to have to go through this constant cycle of “maybe you’re THE ONE!” “Never mind you’re just like the others who HURT ME.” We’re tired of it too! Imagine having to be the one with those kinds of swings. Destroying our own relationships out of fear and anger does nothing for our quality of life, and is precisely what makes splitting a form of disordered thinking.